Large Vertical Axis Turbine Resurrected?

Just had a Linked-in post from Paul Gipe come in about “Agile Wind Power” in Switzerland:
LINK:

The blades have what looks, to me, like a weird way of attaching to the rotating arms, with some large round fastener attaching the leading edge base of each blade to the arms. They use two individual blades to comprise each apparent blade. Seems like one-piece blades might be stronger. There is a mechanism to constantly adjust the pitch of each blade in real time throughout its rotation. That is typically where “Professor Crackpot” takes vertical-axis machines. They start with “no need to aim!” as a main advantage, but then the have to screw it up: “But if we could make it responsive to the wind direction. it would work even better!” (Yes but if you just used a horizontal-axis design it would work even better still!) One mental exercise is to imagine how large of a horizontal-axis turbine could be built using the same amount of blade material and steel. Take the three blades and arrange them radially - you would have at least twice the swept area. Oh well, the good professor is always there, sometimes under the radar, but he poked his head up again! :slight_smile:

Here’s a video from October, 2020, when it was first run. It ran for a few weeks, then threw a blade in December 2020.
VIDEO LINK:

One of many major problems with vertical-axis turbines is the blades are not aligned with the predominant forces…

Website LINK:
https://www.agilewindpower.com/en/news:

Actually I guess it threw the blade on November 15, 2020.